


Void

by Selethe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark Harry, Dark Magic, F/M, Fox Animagus Harry, Mafia AU, No Horcruxes, No prophecy, Orphan Harry Potter, Post-Apocalyptic, Romance, coffee shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 09:29:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21443992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selethe/pseuds/Selethe
Summary: Coffee Shop AU -- Mafia!HarryThere's no prophecy, no seven horcruxes, and Voldemort never died. But there is a lot of coffee... and a lot of crime.
Kudos: 32





	Void

**Author's Note:**

> The darkest coffee shop AU, the silliest mafia fic AU. Harry/Fleur all the way. I'm open to feedback!

Under the wasp-wing sky, Knockturn Alley thrummed with life as wizards and witches hurried to work. Sunlight, bright and iridescent, flooded though the bay windows of _Gravity_, leaving rainbows on the white marble tiles. It was a cozy, high-class sort of cafe. A herb garden crawled across the left wall and several expensive paintings hung on the right. As it turned out, when Marius Black had mentioned that their numerous customers would expect him to know their exact order, that hadn’t been a joke.

Regulars settled into the cafe, breathing in coffee over books or crossword puzzles. One wizard stood out from the rest. Leg propped up on the table, a newspaper stately spread out like wings over his knee was one Durward Hyde. The wizard hadn’t ordered anything. He simply enjoyed the view.

It had been a beautiful irony to discover Hyde frequented the same cafe owned by Harry’s boss.

Harry ran the inside of a mug with a washcloth as he surgically studied the man. The way he flipped pages, the manner in which his breath caught over certain headlines, his instinct to cross his left leg over his right. It was pure misfortune that Hyde’s position obscured his eyes.

“Are you new?” asked a young dirty-blond man (the quill scrawled the name ‘Wilhelm’ onto the mug) “But where is dear Marius? Ill?”

“I’m just filling in for today. What can I get you?”

“Butterfly latte.” Harry refrained from rolling his eyes at Wilhelm’s sudden poutiness. Marius Black was _blind_. Harry could never hope to compete with such a spectacle. “Did he not leave you instructions? You poor lad. Marius does, at times, remind me of my little sister—”

Tuning Wilhelm out, Harry prepared the coffee with one hand while flipping through the recipe book with the other. The drink was a delicate mix between vanilla and some kind of purple floral shit. The taste of it hardly mattered. It was more important that the steam swirled up into its signature brightly-colored insects. The caffeine was meant to settle in the stomach like a thousand little butterflies, evoking a symptom of youthful ardor.

Life seemed livelier when you were in love, after all.

“—And so I told mother that Francesca would be playing quidditch over my unanimated corpse! It’s a dead sport in my books, but mother used to play beater, very well in fact, she got to nationals, and she’s got it stuck in her head that my sister needs to follow in her footsteps…”

“Yes, of course,” said Harry, offering him the mug. Wilhelm smiled politely and took a sip.

Harry began organizing the counter, keeping an eye on Hyde, when the shop bell rang. For the prices, the cafe was disgustingly busy. How could anyone justify spending so much on a drink? Perhaps Marius’s disability saved him more grief than it caused.

A twitchy man approached the counter, babbling on about a job interview. It had to be only a few seconds, but Harry simply couldn’t take it anymore.

“I’ll add in a shot of charm, free of charge,” said Harry, cutting him off.

“You can? H-how many of those can you add?”

“Legally? One.” Sighing, Harry took in the clammy face, the wringing hands, and tsk’ed, pulling the golden lever down three times. If the man failed his job interview now, then he’d truly been beyond saving. Finishing the drink, he turned. Harry’s vision zeroed in dangerously at the wand pointed right at his nose.

“You are under arrest!” said the man. “For the illicit production of disreputable beverages!”

Harry had barely strung two words together before his wrists were in cuffs and he was being hauled out of the cafe. A mug shattered against the floor, accompanied by a high-pitched shriek. Harry only had enough neck to catch the scene in his peripherals: Wilhelm staring agape at the floor. In the bottom part of mug lay a stack of sodden, twitching butterflies.

Well.

Not bad for a first try.

///

The hitwizard had apparated them to somewhere in the bowels of the Ministry. Without saying a word, he shoved Harry down onto a metal chair and adjusted his cuffs, freeing one of his wrists to chain him to the seat. Four walls of thick, cold metal, and the air smelled of ash. Of spellfire. Vaguely, Harry heard the hitwizard arguing with someone outside the chamber before the voices stopped. The door slammed open, revealing a short, plump wizard whose enormously thick glasses reduced his eyes to molelike specks.

“My name is Bob Ogden. I’m head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad.”

“I’d like a lawyer,” said Harry.

“Thieves and murderers get lawyers,” said Ogden. “You get me.”

Ogden slapped a wanted poster on the metal desk in front of Harry. A shadowy, sinister figure grinned up at them, too lean with too many teeth. It snapped its jaws and laughed silently; against the black-and-white sketch, the only splashes of color were bright green eyes and a red lightning bolt scar. In large typeset the bounty offered 300 galleons.

_The Black Fox of Saint Street._

“You’re telling me you’ve never seen this poster before?” asked Ogden.

Shrugging, Harry manufactured a casual slouch. “Sure. I’ve seen it. I don’t recognize him.”

The man’s mouth thinned and Harry could nearly taste the several furious thoughts competing for dominance in his mind. Instead, Ogden merely pushed the poster forward an inch. “Is that not your scar? It’s… distinctive.”

“You’re telling me I look like a fucking dementor?”

“The Black Fox,” the man savored the words, running his finger along the length of his wand. “You know, I looked up fox animagi in the registry and I didn’t catch a ‘Harry’ in there. I know the jinx to force someone into their animal form. We can settle this quickly. I don’t think I need to remind you that the punishment for an unregistered animagus far outweighs that of the negligent handling of Class III Additives.”

Silence stretched heavily between them. Harry’s eyes hardened as he weighed the words. “You’ll let me go, but your mercy is conditional.”

The man was hardly phased but Harry was looking for it. Weakness started in fractions. There was surprise in the tilt of his brows, but no following element of recalculation; he was more determined to appear unshakable than to use his brain. “Removing a brick won’t topple a house. The things you’ve done, Harry, are not things a man conjures up alone. On December 12th, Mundungus Fletcher was found tied to the top of Borgin & Burke’s, alive and seemingly unharmed, but afraid out of his wits. He couldn’t remember the last two days. It wasn’t like time had slipped out of his grasp— he was acutely aware that an element of his life had been torn out of him. Fletcher’s only recollection is of a peculiar lightning-bolt shaped scar.” Ogden paused. “He had information you wanted. What _someone wanted_. Who is that someone?”

Harry’s mouth fell open, as if by a magic spell, from the unexpected degree of ignorance just delivered to him. It had to be impossible. Did that hitwizard not tell Ogden where he'd picked him up from? “I think,” the words came very slowly, “that if you arrest a wizard on charges of being an unregistered animagus, you’ll have a riot on your hands. People want Death Eaters. Not mouthy baristas.”

“You admit it, then,” said Ogden, unperturbed. “You are the Black Fox.”

“Fox animagi are nearly as common as cat animagi.”

“Are you incapable of speaking frankly?”

Harry’s grin was brittle. “Well, you won’t let me have a lawyer.”

Ogden exhaled loudly. “I should put you in a holding cell for your lack of respect.”

“You’re up to your eyeballs in crime. You don’t have a free cell.” Harry leaned back in his chair, canting his head like a curious bird eyeing an earthworm wriggling out of the mud. “I _can_ prove my innocence. You see, sir, I grew up with nothing and I continue to have nothing. I don’t own a wand. I don’t have an education. Check every wandmaker, every private tutor; I’ve never been able to afford either. What you’re accusing me of… I lack the capability.”

“So you were framed? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Fletcher says he only recalls a scar. A single, distinctive detail.” Harry pulled up his fringe, displaying the thin white mark. A sliver of resentment churned in his gut at having to show it, like he was an animal at a zoo. “But is this what you would remember of me?”

“Why would the fox frame you?”

“Because I don’t matter to your sort,” said Harry. “You say my name, ‘Harry’, and we both pretend it’s because you’re the friendly type, but it’s really because you don’t know my last. You couldn’t find it. The truth is I don’t have one.” In a flare of inspiration, the Ministry’s most recent scandal surfaced in his mind like a flash of teeth. “Let’s not fool ourselves, sir, if my corpse were found on the side of the street, you would vanish it too.”

The bespectacled man sucked in a long breath through his teeth and stood up, metal chair scraping behind him. “I will check every wand shop and every school all the way from the top of Diagon to the bottom of Knockturn. And you’re right. Our cells are rather full right now. Which is why you can wait here until I’m done.”  
  
Harry cursed softly as Ogden left, tugging on his wrist.


End file.
